(true story) I gazed out of my bathroom window recently, and I looked up, and I saw a RAINBOW. And I wondered, what lies somewhere over the rainbow? Is there a pot of gold at the end? A rainbow moves when I, the observer, move around. We only see it when we are in the right place to see it. So, is getting the right angle on the rainbow, the real pot of gold? Do people smoke "pot" in order to get a better angle on things? Maybe getting a better angle on things is the real "gold."

Considering rainbows helps reveal our own participation in shaping reality. We've heard of the rainbow bridge. The mystical Jewish tradition of the kabbala says that the rainbow bridge links up our normal consciousness to the divine. I can look up in the sky and see a rainbow, and then I realize my union with the sky. I discover that my perception of the sky is in my brain and in my mind, and that my mind is also up in the sky. By seeing it in that way, we can fly over the rainbow. As Alan Watts put it in his talk, "The Power of Space", a rainbow exists because of 3 reasons: 1st, because of the sun's rays, 2nd, because the moisture in the sky refracts the sun's light, and 3rd, because I am in the right position to perceive it. The rainbow arises through this triangulation, and it defies our usual sense of separation.

So when I feel I am lost and going nowhere, I can look up. I can realize that I am part of a larger process than myself. When I chase the pot at the end of the rainbow, it recedes from me. Instead of chasing it, I can rediscover that the real "gold" is just seeing the rainbow, and being glad that it came to me.

The rainbow's colors reveal the harmonic essence of life. Colors and sounds both move in spectrums, wheels, octaves and spirals which can't be explained. They are keys to eternal truths that are within me as well as without me. The circles and the wheels of art, music and creation return on themselves, and yet take us somewhere too, just like wheels on a car that move against the still roadway. On spirals we can go up and down, or go backwards and forwards at once, like 02/02/2020-- the date I wrote this essay. It is the divine marriage we seek, whereby we can learn to both be still, flowing and receptive, and at the same time be intentionally assertive and doing things. That is the real gold of the great work, the spiritual quest.

My Band of Writers Essays

Renee Zellweger sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow in the movie "Judy"

The Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog

The real gold of the alchemical quest, is
the divine marriage of doing and being.

I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think, maybe it's both, maybe both happening at the same time

What happened to the Alien in Justin Bieber's Backpack?

Philosophy on a Circle

"A still more cogent example of existence as relationship is the production of a rainbow. For a rainbow appears only when there is a certain triangular relationship between three components: the sun, moisture in the atmosphere, and an observer. If all three are present, and if the angular relationship between them is correct, then, and then only, will there be the phenomenon "rainbow." Diaphanous as it may be, a rainbow is no subjective hallucination. It can be verified by any number of observers, though each will see it in a slightly different position." -- Alan Watts https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/